


Soot-Salt and Satisfaction

by icarus_chained



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Developing Relationship, Fae & Fairies, Falling In Love, Fate, Forgiveness, Introspection, Kings & Queens, Lust, M/M, Magic, Multi, Post-Coital, Prophecy, Protectiveness, Scars, Senses, Sensuality, Sharing a Bed, Smoking, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 06:59:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4737041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Childermass lays back in a king's fairy bower, and considers fate, prophecy, and the men he shares it with. They've come a ways and paid a price or two to end up there, after all. Childermass/Stephen/Vinculus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Soot-Salt and Satisfaction

**Author's Note:**

> Something of the mildly smutty companion to [On the Road to York](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4701533). John Childermass went oddly synesthetic on me, for some reason. Also, this is very much TV!verse, borrowing a lot from Episode 7.

Childermass leaned back against the headboard, his legs stretched out along the bed, his feet crossed at the ankle, a pipe smouldering cheerfully in his hand. He had the beginnings of a pleasant ache in the small of his back, and the taste of the pipe smoke twined itself with the memories of spending in his mouth, a bitter soot-salt taste that seemed to him to be the very epitome of satisfaction. He'd always appreciated a pipe after the fact. His companions in this little venture, or one of them at least, had looked at him somewhat askance for it, but there'd been no protest levelled. Childermass counted that close enough to permission, even if he'd been particularly inclined to need any.

Not a bad venture, no. He'd never been debauched by a king before, nor returned the favour either. He'd never tasted words written in magic on someone's skin, nor traced his own across them with blunt fingers. He'd never had or been had in what was for all intents and purposes a fairy bower, a great lake of a bed wrapped in living wood and coiled in magic. It had been the stuff of fairytales, to be sure, and so far without the costs that oft accompanied such things. There'd been no thorns beneath the petals yet, no blood asked or shed. They were a fine pair he'd followed into Faerie, right enough. 

He looked over at them now, puffing contentedly. They'd curled up together somewhat, inside of him on the bed. Stephen lay beside him, his broad back pressed along Childermass' thigh, his head pillowed beside Childermass' hip. His hair had come loose from its queue, tight black curls spread across the damp nape of his neck. The sight made Childermass want to stir them with a fingertip, tease their coils between the pads of his fingers, but he refrained. No need to disturb the pair just yet. Vinculus lay on Stephen's far side, a skinny, snoring collection of ink-stained limbs curled up against Stephen's chest, the faerie king's arm thrown protectively across his shoulders. Maybe possessively, as well. Vinculus appeared entirely content with this arrangement, the old reprobate cuddled quite happily under Stephen's aegis. 

They made a pretty picture, in their way. Not a usual one, not by a long shot, but he'd never been much for usual. They had a taste of magic about them, of ink and silver and hawthorn and faerie. A pleasing thing, like the feel of paper and cardboard through the fingers, the spool of the future laid out beneath your hands. They had a shape and a hiddenness to them that he could not help but enjoy.

They'd welcomed him too, which was also not entirely usual. There was a thing between them that he was not part of, yet they'd welcomed him in amongst it readily enough. Not all the way, of course. Looking down at them, he had the sense that he was more standing guard over them than joining with them for the moment. It didn't disturb him. Such things took time, and he'd guarded worse things for less gain in his time. He'd be content to mind them a while longer, even if nothing came of it, and maybe spend a night or two in a fairy bower in the process. It wouldn't exactly be a hardship.

There was a little more to it than that, though. A little more than magic and companionship and the soot-salt taste of satisfaction. Something in him stirred to them. A strange, sleepy thing, an ache beneath his breastbone, itchy fingers spreading out beneath his ribs. He'd felt something like it when he'd first seen the Cards of Marseilles. Not quite a possessiveness, simply a sensation of rightness. Something in them belonged to him, however small it might be. Something in him belonged to them. It didn't mean more than it was. It might be no more than a name or a night that was owed. But there was something, an itchy belonging thing, and that inclined him towards them again. This was the right place to be. The knowledge contented him in itself.

He took another draw on the pipe, leaning his head back to close his eyes for a minute. There was a boneless lassitude spreading through him, but he wasn't quite ready for sleep yet. The magic here had coiled beneath his skin, teasing him with the shifts and eddies of it, leaving him with the vague sensation that the bed truly was a lake, a buoying, cradling thing. Stephen's back, beside him, seemed a rock in the midst of it, an island anchoring point. He wanted to lean across it, to tie himself to its strength, moor himself as Vinculus had already been moored. Stephen was king here, the magic recognised that. It leaned into him, pulled its frailer human flotsam after it. It was not an insistent pull. An eddy, not a tide. Childermass might resist it easily enough, if he wanted to. He simply wasn't sure if he did.

He opened his eyes again, rolled his head onto his shoulder to study that back in the soft faerie light. His gaze drifted again to the curls at Stephen's neck, their freedom somehow more suggestive of debauchery than all the rest of their nakedness. He'd never seen that hair not clubbed ruthlessly back. In their old life, there had never been a moment where Stephen Black had not seemed somehow constrained, mute and dignified in what Childermass belatedly recognised had been anguish. Though their talents in many ways had been roughly similar, by all accounts Stephen had been everything that he had not, as a servant and a man of business. He had been respectful and respectable, dignified and deferential. He had been the perfect servant, his hair bound up tight, and now he wasn't. Now he was a king, and his hair coiled loose and damp in the bed he shared with two other men.

He'd paid for it, though. Childermass could see that as well. It had caught his eye earlier, or rather his fingers first, the shape of it a startlement as he'd clung with desperate hands to that back as it arched above him. Further down from the nape, next to the spine. A round, raised mark, a rude interruption in smooth skin. He'd recognised it, though he'd had other, somewhat more interesting concerns at the time, between Stephen above him and Vinculus' absolutely filthy mouth at his ear. He'd known the mark for what it was. He wore a twin of it on his own left shoulder. 

He wondered who'd shot the man, and when. The scar had a feeling of magic about it, an odd stickiness against his fingers. He didn't think it was old. Not from before Norrell, anyway, not before this all started. He'd have heard it if Stephen had been shot since then. That left those last moments, that storm before the hush. It had happened at Last Hope, or possibly at Hurtfew. He hoped not the latter. He had an idea of who in that house would have shot someone just for the sake of it. He'd his own scar across his cheek to remember the man by, and he somehow didn't like the thought that Stephen's scar might have come by the same hand.

He looked at the thing. He reached out with one hand, almost against his own volition, and rested the pad of his thumb gently across it. Stephen stirred faintly beneath the touch. Not quite asleep either, then. Holding Vinculus warm and deceptively fragile against him, but not quite lost to dreamland just yet. He turned his head a little, blinked blearily back at Childermass across his shoulder. Childermass shrugged, sketching a shape of negation with the glowing pipe bowl in one hand, while the other smoothed gently across the man's back.

"Just thinking, that's all," he said, brushing an apology into the man's skin. "Idle thoughts, your majesty, and fingers that wandered without my leave. Don't mind me."

Stephen had woken, though. He'd drifted back up through the fog-layers of sleep, and blinked more intently, trying to clear his eyes and his thoughts. Childermass watched it with an odd fascination, a surge of that itchy, belonging thing in his chest. Stephen turned slightly onto his back to face him more easily, and Vinculus rolled into the cleared space with a snorted interruption to his snoring. The beggar didn't wake, but he did twist himself around in agitation, seeking instinctively for Stephen's strength, and flung one arm in quelling possessiveness around the king's waist. Stephen blinked down at him, startled, and a rush of something salt-sweet and aching flooded through Childermass. He couldn't breathe for a second, waiting for the seizing strength of it to ease. Something had grabbed him, he thought. Something had wrapped fingers beneath his ribs and gripped him tight.

"... I feel I should apologise to him," Stephen said softly, still looking at Vinculus in bemusement. "I'm not sure how, though, when he is still asleep."

Childermass shook his head, trying to clear the ache from his chest and the prickling from his eyes. He swallowed, and moved his fingers from a marred back to a firm shoulder, gripping for a second in mute support.

"Apologise when he wakes, then," he said, with a credible imitation of composure. "He'll not know for what, but I doubt he'll mind that. He's used to only knowing the half of things. Mean it gently, and he'll not care."

He wouldn't, either. There had always been a certain ready forgiveness to Vinculus, a sort of wild, staticky submission to the whims of fate and the well-meaning of men. He would lean into a hand that had hit him, once assured that it would not do so again. There was bitterness in him, to be sure, as there was in anyone, and a sly viciousness at times, but the man did not seem to hold a grudge, once apology was offered in good faith. He had forgiven Childermass for years on the run. He had forgiven Stephen for watching him hang. A man who could forgive that would forgive a disturbance in his sleep without a thought.

Stephen stirred. There was an oddness to his expression, when Childermass looked down at it. Mayhap his thoughts had run along a similar line. He raised his hand, the one whose arm lay curled beneath Vinculus' shoulders, and cupped it gently at the bald crown of Vinculus' head, above the wild snarl of the man's hair. It was a protective gesture, an apology offered into the man's skin, and Childermass understood it well. He'd felt a similar urge, while laying the man's body down among the rocks. It would seem his and Stephen's thoughts were well aligned here.

"... What were you thinking about?" Stephen asked softly. His eyes were dark, still fixed on the man cradled in his arms, and Childermass had the idea that he was asking mostly for distraction, for some way around the gripping thing inside his chest. He could not fault him for it. "You were touching my back. What were you thinking about?"

Childermass gripped his pipe between his teeth for a moment. Not for the smoke. The embers had almost died. For the strength, and the soot-salt taste of satisfaction once more. He breathed it in to loosen the thing in his chest, and when his voice was clear he answered calmly.

"Scars," he said, his other hand still firm and gentle around the man's shoulder. "And stations. You have a pistol scar on your back. I noticed it earlier. I wondered who had given it to you."

Stephen blinked, looking up from Vinculus in mild startlement. Not what he had expected, apparently. Even with Childermass' fingers on the mark. "I did not know it had scarred," the faerie king admitted, half-glancing across his own shoulder as if he might somehow twist enough to see it. "I was full of magic at the time. All the magic in England. I think I died, and then did not die. I couldn't be sure if the wound was even real."

Childermass digested that. So then. Hurtfew or Lost Hope for sure, and somehow he did not think the fairy would have shot the man. They liked things more inventive. It was a blunt sort of viciousness to simply shoot the man, and in the back as well. His fingers tightened against the stem of the pipe. For a moment, they almost threatened it damage.

"... It's funny, then," he said, a sideline to pull his mind from dangerous waters. He gripped Stephen's shoulder, looked down across him to the street magician curled against his chest. A sort of humour did fill him, dark and staticky and full of an itchy, clawing thing. Yet humour, nonetheless. The kind he thought Vinculus, of all of them, would know full well. He shook his head, and curved his lips in a smile around his pipe. "Here we are, your majesty. All in bed together, a prophet, a magician and a faerie king. Two shot servants and one hanged beggar. Fate is a funny thing, is it not?"

He felt the phantom shapes of cards beneath his fingers. He felt the words written into Vinculus' skin, and the marks carved across his own and Stephen's. He felt the magic, all around them, the ebb and flow and distant whispering of a far-off king. Fate. Oh yes. Fate was such a very funny thing indeed. Yet they must submit to it, must they not. If they hadn't, if they hadn't traced those paths through words and cards and wounds, how could they have come to here? How could they have ended in this bed together, with magic all around them, hair unbound and stations laid behind them?

He looked down at Stephen, found the man looking back at him with that same pain and pitch-dark humour in his eyes. A king unbound, a rock and an island against which to be sheltered. A man who had died to become so, as much as the man in his arms had died, and as much as the man ranged above him had come close. Thorns beneath the petals, fairytales won in blood. And yet fairytales even still. Fairytales and happy endings, or least ones flavoured soot-salt with satisfaction. There was a reason they had never let go of magic. There was a reason, for all its poison, why they all of them wanted it still.

"... I told you that," a soft, cracked voice whispered below them, ripe with old humour. They looked down, the both of them, and Vinculus grinned a seamy grin back up at them, a wild blue knowing in his eyes. A sly viciousness, such as lived in any man at times. "I told you so, my loves. We were written long ago. Only thing left is to reap what rewards we can from it." He chuckled, squirming around onto his belly to watch them with a quiet sort of leer, one that abruptly reminded Childermass at least of the ache in his lower back, and the pleasantness that had led to it. "I don't know about you two, but I'm finding those rewards pretty fine so far."

They looked at each other again, two shot servants held prey by a hanged beggar, and then abruptly Childermass smiled. He took his pipe out from between his teeth, set it very carefully into a cranny of the roots around them, and smiled a smile full of all his teeth.

"Well," he said, the words tasting of soot-salt and silver and ink. "I'd say they're not so bad myself. Wouldn't you agree, your majesty?"

And as answers went, the strength of Stephen's hand at his nape and the sudden taste of his kiss weren't that bad either.


End file.
